Thursday, August 30, 2012

salsa anyone???

Wow, do we have tomatoes.  That was the plan back when I planted the garden this spring, I wanted lots of tomatoes, and boy, did I get them.  I was going to make them all into salsa, but I've run out of pint sized mason jars and my jalapeno peppers don't ripen at the same time as the tomatoes, so I'm all out of peppers, though I'll have a glut of them about when my tomatoes run out.  I'll just freeze them up so they're ready for next years salsa binge.  I've been making salsa all day today. It's 9:50 pm and I've still got one last load of jars waiting to get stuck in the canner.  I probably got about 25-30 pints of salsa made and about a dozen jars of juice - I drain the juice from the tomatoes before making them into salsa to make thicker salsa with the added benefit of getting jars of tomato juice out of the deal.  I've still got about a bushel basket of tomatoes out in the garden that I didn't get around to picking today, I'll do those tomorrow.

Angel #4 had open house for school today, so now she's got her locker assignment, class schedule etc.  We're one step closer to getting those guys on the bus on Tuesday!

Hubs has been working his butt off on our house.  It started Monday, the 20th, when we was going to replace the window in our entryway.  The window we had in there was really old and was the first of many windows we're planning on replacing. So anyway, last Monday he took off the siding around the window to see what needed to be done to replace it. Well, 160 year old houses are full of surprises (and rotten boards), so the simple window replacement led to ripping the walls out of the enclosed porch and rebuilding them all, AFTER the foundation was re-cemented and some of the support beams under the floor were replaced.  There was no insulation on the north side of our house at all, so now that all got insulated, all the siding on half the northern side of the house is ripped off as well as everything on the west side of the house.  Things were insulated and caulked, boards were replaced and finally, today, the new window was put in.  YAY!!  Hubs also replaced the 2 windows in Angel #2's bedroom on the west wall.  He also wrapped the house in Tyvak which should do wonders in blocking some of the wind that we get blasted with.

In addition to helping hubs with the house, WE's been keeping himself busy as well.  He's got cross-country practice every morning, which is really causing his appetite to go through the roof.  That kid is constantly eating.  Tonight, the cross-country team got together to have a pasta party.  The night before a CC meet, the kids try to get together and cram themselves full of carbs to keep them going for the big run.  Remember what it was like to be young and you purposely fill yourself full of calories?  WE also impressed me today with his unknown mechanical skills.  The starter has been going out on my mini-van for the last couple months and it finally got to the point this week where it was getting real difficult to start it.  I was afraid I was going to get stranded somewhere.  So hubs ordered the starter, ran off the instructions he found online to replace it and handed it all over to WE.  It took him a couple hours, but my van starts like a dream now.  Pretty good for a kid that had never done anything more difficult than change the oil before.

So now I've got a new starter, new windows and dozens of jars of salsa piled up in my basement.  Life doesn't get any better.

No comments: